Monday, 5 September 2011

Father's Day - Family Fun Day, Australian Museum and Dumplings for lunch

For Father's day we went to the Australian Museum to see the Beauty from Nature: art of the Scott sisters. I was quite excited because I really love natural history publications and old lithographs/watercolours/botanical prints.

From the Australian Museum website:

Beautiful and intricate, this stunning exhibition features more than
60 delicate watercolours, as well as rarely-seen notebooks, handwritten
manuscripts, sketches and letters, which together form a fascinating
record of the lives of Harriet (Hattie) and Helena (Nellie) Scott.

Turn back the pages as you uncover the captivating story of these two
extraordinary women whose love of nature and tremendous skill in
rendering its beauty enabled them to distinguish themselves amid the
male-dominated world of 19th century science.

The highlight of the exhibition is the 60 watercoloured paintings
created between 1846 and 1851 for their father A.W Scott’s landmark
publication Australian Lepidoptera and their Transformations.

Considered the finest examples of the sisters’ work, the paintings
feature caterpillars in life-like poses, gorgeous butterflies, native
flowers and stunning landscapes.

The exhibition features more than 100 of the original moths and
butterflies collected by the Scotts during their research for the
Lepidoptera and donated to the Australian Museum in the 1860s.

I even asked Erika what did she want to do on Father's day - would she like to see pictures of butterflies or go to the zoo? She said she would like to see pictures of butterflies.

I loved the watercolours and sketches. The scientific detail was excellent, and I think that any of their prints would make an excellent addition to my wall!

One of the other great things about our day out was that it was Sunday - which is Family Fun Day for Cityrail. This means that for $2.50 you can get an all day public transport ticket as long as you have at least one child with you, and travel around as much as you want. So the kids got to ride on the train and have some fun, and we got some cheap transport.

For lunch we went to check out the Westfield in Pitt St Mall. Haven't been there since the revamp and it looks great. We went to the food court (thinking, ugh what boring Westfield food are we going to have today) and it was actually a REALLY nice food court. They had Din Tai Fung Dumpling Express there, so that's what I ended up getting us for lunch, and they had a Becasse Bakery and so many fast food outlets I hadn't seen before but would love to go back and try again the next time I go to the city. Sushi, Mexican, kebabs, fish, health food... too many things to choose from! So we had the Xiao Long Bao and Siu Mai steamed with the soup inside (kids didn't like that for some reason), and the fried Siu Mai, as well as the dessert steamed dumplings and hot and sour soup. Pricey but yummy! (Pics here by Food Booze shoes for Urbanspoon).

So for Father's day, hubby got a card with Baba written by Erika, and I got him a Tempur pillow to try. Hope it works well for him. At the end of our outing, hubby thanked me for the fun Father's day.